Upper Salmon River Steelhead Fishing Report 11.3.26

The steelhead bite picked up with the river’s clarity—and anglers followed. Last week, effort rose across the Upper Salmon, and catch rates improved upstream of the Middle Fork, with the best action reported mid-week. Here’s Brent Beller’s Idaho Fish and Game update for October 26–November 1:

Here is the Upper Salmon River (USR) steelhead fishing report for last week (October 26-November 1). The attached PDF contains the angler effort and catch rate table location codes 14-17. Additionally, the two attached images show the flow and temperature readings for the USR during the past week.

We observed a large increase in angler effort last week on the USR. Most anglers continued to fish downstream of North Fork in location code 15, but we did start to see more effort upstream of North Fork in location code 16 and upstream of Salmon in location code 17. Despite the large increase in anglers compared to the previous week, overall angler effort continued to be noticeably lower than what we have observed during the past couple of fall fisheries. 

Catch rates also improved considerably in all areas upstream of the Middle Fork Salmon River last week. We began seeing more steelhead caught as soon as river conditions improved following the rainstorm that impacted the area two weekends ago. The best fishing was mid-week, from Tuesday to Friday, before a second round of wet weather arrived for the weekend. Anglers interviewed downstream of North Fork in location code 15 averaged 25 hours per steelhead caught, while anglers interviewed upstream of North Fork in location code 16 averaged 17 hours per steelhead caught. Angler effort was low, and we did not obtain many interviews from upstream of the Lemhi River in location code 17, but anglers interviewed in that area had the best average catch rate for the week at 9 hours per steelhead caught.

As of today, the Salmon River has good visibility and is flowing at 1,280 cfs through Salmon, ID. Water temperatures did not change much throughout last week and remained in the mid-40s over the weekend. The weather forecast for the upcoming weekend looks promising, so we are anticipating another busy week on the USR.

^{Photo by Angela Maxwell}